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New parents cope with exhaustion by recreating iconic movies sceneshttp://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/07/24/new-parents-cope-with-exhaustion-by-recreating-iconic-movies-scenes/
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/07/24/new-parents-cope-with-exhaustion-by-recreating-iconic-movies-scenes/#commentsFri, 24 Jul 2015 14:57:40 +0000http://blog.flickr.net/?p=68924]]>Shortly after moving from their native New Zealand to Australia, in 2013, Lilly and Leon Mackie had a baby. Thousands of miles from their friends and family, surrounded by empty cardboard boxes, and divested of a social life, their seemingly dull lives inspired the creation of an Internet phenomenon and an enduring family tradition.

“After about six months of a lot of Saturday nights at home and having no babysitters, we started to get a bit bored.” Leon says. “We decided to do a family photo in the style of The Life Aquatic [with Steve Zissou],” with their 6-month-old son, Orson, at the helm of the submarine. The Mackies chose to replicate the film’s iconic poster because they identified with the characters’ deadpan looks. Leon explains, “As new parents, we were quite sleep-deprived, and the expressions on their faces kind of summed up how we looked every day.” The photo was an immediate hit with friends and family back home. So, Lilly and Leon started leveraging their collection of leftover boxes, along with their affection for movies, into a weekly family photo.

After a few months, they set up a blog titled Cardboard Box Office, and soon had a few hundred followers. But when a friend put a link on the blog Laughing Squid right before Christmas in 2013, everything changed. “Over the course of about three days, we got about thirty thousand followers on Facebook, and we were on every major news network, it seemed, [from] around the world,” recalls Lilly. They had three interviews on Christmas morning before they could open gifts.

Eighteen months later, the Mackies have done nearly 70 scenes, and show no signs of slowing down. They’ve even been nominated for a Webby. But their success hasn’t changed their process. They refuse to spend more than $30 — often less — on any of their shoots. Instead of buying fancy props, they primarily build sets out of stuff they have lying around the house, which frequently includes a healthy dose of cardboard and duct tape.

A typical shoot begins around lunchtime on a Saturday, when Lilly and Leon settle on which movie they want to recreate. “The way that we choose a film is that it generally is a movie that we grew up on, from the ’80s and ’90s,” explains Leon. He usually takes charge of constructing the sets, while Lilly plays with Orson. According to her, “The sets can take up to five hours sometimes, depending on how big they are, and we aim to shoot just before Orson goes to bed at about 8 p.m.”

Orson, now 2 years old, has grown more engaged with the process, getting excited about not only spotting himself in finished photos, but also sets he likes. “He loved the clock tower in Back to the Future,” says Leon, “And he loved the helicopter in M.A.S.H.”

Although Lilly and Leon insist that they had no prenatal intentions of creating a future filmmaker, they smile at the overlap of their son’s name with Orson Welles, the legendary director of Citizen Kane. But perhaps the biggest breakout star of Cardboard Box Office has been Orson’s first teddy bear, Gundy. “People now look out for him, and if we don’t include Gundy in a photo, we will get a lot of comments asking where he is,” Lilly explains. After her mother bought a second, identical bear, Gundy and his clone made their duet debut portraying the twins in The Shining.

Lilly and Leon have been touched by the responses they’ve had from people around the world. Some have written to say the series inspired them to become more creative and spend more time building things with their kids. Many have said it brings a smile to their face. “The Media attention is great, but it’s just the simple messages that really make it worthwhile,” Leon remarks.

For Lilly, these photographs have taken on a personal significance. “We’ve found doing these photos that we’ve created, by chance, a tradition for our family. Even if we don’t continue doing it every weekend for the rest of our lives, it’s our tradition now, and it’s going to be awesome to look back on.”

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group, or tweet us at @TheWeeklyFlickr.

]]>http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/07/24/new-parents-cope-with-exhaustion-by-recreating-iconic-movies-scenes/feed/0rfritztwfWeeklyFlickr LogoFashion photographer’s life changed by chance encounterhttp://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/07/10/fashion-photographers-life-changed-by-chance-encounter/
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/07/10/fashion-photographers-life-changed-by-chance-encounter/#commentsFri, 10 Jul 2015 13:00:21 +0000http://blog.flickr.net/?p=68498]]>By virtually any definition, Rick Guidotti had it all. As an in-demand fashion photographer in the 1990s, he routinely shot supermodels like Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford. Based in New York City, he also lived in Paris and Milan, working for high-profile clients like Yves Saint Laurent, Revlon, and Marie Claire.

But beneath the glamour, he was routinely frustrated by the narrow and predictable standards of beauty his field forced upon him. “I was always told who was beautiful,” he explains. “As an artist, I didn’t only see beauty on the covers of magazines. I saw beauty everywhere.”

Everything changed one afternoon in Manhattan. Rick left his studio after a casting session for Elle Magazine, and as he walked down Park Avenue, he caught a glimpse of a pale young woman waiting for the bus. “I [had] never met a model that looked like her,” he says. Although he didn’t manage to catch up to her before she got on the bus, that glimpse forever altered the course of his life and career.

Although he knew virtually nothing about albinism, Rick recognized its telltale lack of pigmentation in the girl he saw. She had very pale skin and virtually white hair. He thought she was gorgeous. Captivated, he ran down a few blocks to Barnes & Noble to learn more. But as he began perusing medical textbooks dealing with albinism, he was shocked by the depressing and dehumanizing images he saw. Most were clinical photos of patients naked, up against the wall in doctors’ offices or cancer wards, with black bars across their eyes. Or they were extreme close-ups of giant red eyes. “These were images of diseases. These were not images of people,” he recalls the horror he felt. “And I thought, ‘Where is the photograph of this gorgeous kid I just saw waiting for the bus?’ She wasn’t there.”

Rick decided he wanted to shoot photos that showed the beautiful and human side of people with albinism. He soon discovered NOAH (National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation), a support group for people with albinism. He called them, excited about the possibility of photographing other young people with the unique beauty he had seen that day on Park Avenue. However, NOAH’s initial response was unenthusiastic. Every photo shoot or magazine article that they had agreed to support in the past had turned out to be exploitative or outright negative, and they weren’t about to put the young people in their organization through more humiliation. But Rick was persistent and eventually gained their trust. He had a vision to create images that would counteract the negative and clinical portrayals of people with albinism.

The first young woman Rick photographed as part of his partnership with NOAH was Christine. Although he recognized her as a beautiful teenager, she came into his studio with her head down, shoulders hunched, avoiding eye contact. After a lifetime of merciless teasing in school, he explains, “This kid had zero self-esteem. I thought, ‘Oh, she’s so vulnerable, how am I going to photograph this kid?’” Undeterred, he decided to shoot her with the same style and approach he had used with Cindy Crawford the previous day. “The fan and the music went on, and I grabbed a mirror. I held the mirror up, and I said, ‘Christina, look at yourself. You are magnificent!’ And this kid saw it! She saw this image and she just went, boom! She just exploded with this smile that literally lit up New York City. That’s when I realized how powerful the camera was as a medium, to present self-esteem, to present self-acceptance, and to see beauty.”

That first series of photos of people with albinism became a cover story in Life Magazine and set in motion a new chapter in Rick’s career. People from around the world began to call. Other magazines began running the images. Invitations began pouring in to photograph, to speak, even to help start support groups, and he began a globetrotting advocacy for people with albinism that continues to this day.

Rick also created the nonprofit Positive Exposure in 1998 and ultimately left fashion photography behind. He now photographs and advocates for people not only with albinism but also with a wide host of genetic conditions and chromosome anomalies. Positive Exposure engages in numerous visual-art initiatives to humanize, encourage, and inspire people living with these conditions, including public exhibitions around the world, gallery shows, videos, public speaking, and even working with medical students. “It’s about going into medical schools and presenting these images to health care providers in training, creating that philosophy that it’s not what you’re treating, it’s who you’re treating,” Rick explains.

Positive Exposure’s story is now being told in a documentary titled On Beauty, produced by Kartemquin Films and directed by Joanna Rudnick. The film has won numerous festival awards and premieres in theaters this month.

Rick views his work with Positive Exposure as a continuation of the same passion that first led him into fashion photography. “From day one, when I picked up my camera and started shooting, it has been about beauty. People say, ‘Oh, you went from shooting supermodels to photographing people with genetic diseases.’ I’m like, ‘Well, first of all, I’ve never photographed a genetic disease in my life. This is about people. This is about humanity. Nothing’s changed.’”

Through his photography, Rick is changing how we see people with genetic conditions. “It’s so exciting to be part of this human movement, to see beauty in difference.”

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group, or tweet us at @TheWeeklyFlickr.

]]>http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/07/10/fashion-photographers-life-changed-by-chance-encounter/feed/0rfritztwfWeeklyFlickr LogoPhotos reveal a side of cosplayers you won’t see at Comic Conhttp://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/06/30/photos-reveal-a-side-of-cosplayers-you-wont-see-at-comic-con/
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/06/30/photos-reveal-a-side-of-cosplayers-you-wont-see-at-comic-con/#commentsTue, 30 Jun 2015 13:00:45 +0000http://blog.flickr.net/?p=68158]]>Like many people, portrait photographer Corey Hayes enjoyed comic books as a kid but hadn’t been particularly interested in them as an adult. So when he attended New York Comic Con in 2008, he was looking forward to revisiting his youth, and curious to see what it was like. But as soon as he saw how the “cosplayers” — fans costumed as their favorite comic, film, or anime characters — attracted the other attendees, he knew he had found a photographic story waiting to be told.

“The reaction that the attendees had to the cosplayers reminded me of kids seeing Mickey Mouse at Disneyland,” Corey tells the Weekly Flickr. “They were seen as rock stars, and that fascinated me, because I knew that that can’t be their everyday personality.” Although Corey acknowledges that cosplayers have been photographed millions of times, he had never seen a series that showed these fans both in and out of their costumes. “It’s really the out-of-costume person that fascinates me the most.”

Corey started snapping photos with his phone, and though many of these elaborately adorned fans had traveled great distances to attend the con, he found a few from the New York area willing to come into his studio for a portrait. Given the close-knit nature of the cosplay community, it wasn’t long before he had plenty of cosplayers to photograph, and the AlterEgo series was born.

Given that cosplayers usually create their costumes from scratch, the process of finding, crafting, or assembling the disparate pieces and props can be involved. Ruby Rinekso, who appears in the AlterEgo series as Batman villain Man-Bat, also enjoys portraying the 1960s TV version of the Caped Crusader himself. While a veteran of cosplay (Ruby portrays numerous different characters), he found that the headpiece for Batman presented a unique challenge. Corey explains, “He had tried to create the cowl … over and over again and had never thought that it looked right.” Undeterred, Ruby enlisted some expert assistance. “He tracked down the original cowl creator for the 1960s TV show, had him cast one off of the original mold of Adam West’s head, and that is the one he uses.”

Another cosplayer, Al Vasquez, portrays only Batman. Since receiving his first Batman costume at age 4, he’s spent years accumulating and refining all manner of props and gadgets, including numerous cowls, belts, “baterangs,” and grappling guns. He even uses his costume to visit children’s hospitals, giving sick kids a chance to meet Batman during their stays.

As the series evolved, Corey became fascinated by the way his subjects transformed when they donned their costumes. He remembers his shoot with Gina, a shy 16-year-old high school student who portrays Japanese anime character Gou Matsuoka. “When she came in, she was very nervous and just kind of uncomfortable. Yet when she put on the costume, there’s this complete confidence in taking on this other character. I saw that time and time again throughout the entire series.”

Corey was also amazed to discover not just how popular cosplay is. “I think one of the reasons that people love doing this is there’s such an awesome community amongst cosplayers,” he muses. There’s something about sharing this unusual hobby that brings people together. “Some of these people become their closest friends.”

Although the passion exhibited by many cosplayers may seem excessive to outsiders, Corey’s encounters with its power to bequeath confidence and acceptance came full circle after the series was featured on BuzzFeed. One commenter described how, in high school, he had made fun of his peers who were into live-action role-play and cosplay, but that seeing Corey’s photos had helped him see the appeal of the hobby and the humanity of those who do it. His remarks culminated in a very specific and public apology to those he had ridiculed as a teen. For Corey, seeing that comment made the whole series worthwhile.

Whether he’s crafting portraits with cosplayers or with his celebrity clients, Corey says he’s after the same thing. “My goal is always to find the best in people. Cosplay may seem really fringy, nerdy to a lot of people, but it’s really not. They’re really awesome people and they just have a really colorful and crazy outlet for their interests.”

]]>http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/06/30/photos-reveal-a-side-of-cosplayers-you-wont-see-at-comic-con/feed/0rfritztwfPhotos by Corey HayesPhoto by Corey HayesPhoto by Corey HayesPhoto by Corey HayesPhoto by Corey HayesPhoto by Corey HayesMagical portraits bring kids’ dreams to lifehttp://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/06/19/magical-portraits-bring-kids-dreams-to-life/
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/06/19/magical-portraits-bring-kids-dreams-to-life/#commentsFri, 19 Jun 2015 13:00:07 +0000http://blog.flickr.net/?p=67907]]>English photographer Vicki-Lea Boulter delights in bringing the dreams, ambitions and fantasies of children to life. Her unique approach has earned her numerous distinctions and awards, has and delighted children, while her deceptively simple technique is unencumbered by the strictures of traditional portraiture.

“When a child comes into my studio, the first thing I do is sit down and talk to them about things that make them happy,” she explains. As the conversation evolves, she encourages her young subjects to play, even dress up, while she starts snapping pictures. “We just explore their imagination through photography,” she says. After the shoot in her studio, Vicki frequently heads out into the field to snap photos of other elements for the final image, and then assembles the final portrait in Photoshop.

The conversations are open-ended and range from superheroes to sports, to favorite toys and what the child wants to be when he or she grows up. As a result, Vicki is able to discover and craft an image rooted in the child’s mind and heart, rather than her own impression or that of the child’s parents. Although her work has a distinctive style, no two portraits are the same. “The children always surprise me,” she says.

One girl she photographed arrived wearing a dance outfit native to her Indian heritage. As she leapt and danced around the room during the shoot, Vicki expected she would be creating a portrait about a dancer. But when asked afterwards what she wanted to be when she grew up, the girl surprisingly replied with confidence, “The Tooth Fairy!” So Vicki gave her wings and created a fresh, personalized vision of the mythic dental professional.

Not every child comes into the studio merely looking to play. “Some of the children have something they want to say,” says Vicki. “One little girl came in, and… she wanted a photograph dressed like her hero; and her hero was her dad, who was serving in the forces.” The final portrait reveals a proud daughter dressed in her daddy’s uniform. “We talked about how she misses him and how she wanted to be just like him,” says Vicki. “The main thing she was excited about was giving the image to him afterwards. She was really looking forward to showing him how much she admired him.”

As a result of her success, Vicki published her first book, I Can Be Anything. It features her children’s fantasy portraits, accompanied by poems for the children written by their parents. She is currently working on her second book, entitled Bonnyglade, which uses the fantasy portrait style to tell a story of children rebuilding society in a postapocalyptic world.

Vicki credits her success to the power of listening. “I’m always amazed by how intelligent young people are,” she explains. “Just because they’re small doesn’t mean that they haven’t got a lot going on in their brains.” By beginning her sessions with conversation, rather than directives, she not only creates a safe space for kids to share their dreams, but also to let them know their ideas are meaningful and important.

For Vicki, engaging children, rather than reflexively posing them in a stiff, classic portrait, sends an important message. “I think we need to listen to kids and let them know that they are important, because one day they could grow up thinking that how they look is more important than their dreams and what they want to do with their lives. I think photography through play is a way of doing that.”

In the end, she evaluates her work on the basis of the children’s reactions. “When they get the picture, I want them to think, ‘That’s me. That’s what I want to be.’ And if the parents don’t like the picture, well, I’m not that bothered!”

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group, or tweet us at @TheWeeklyFlickr.

]]>http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/06/19/magical-portraits-bring-kids-dreams-to-life/feed/0rfritztwfWeeklyFlickr LogoMan Hikes From Mexico to Canada, Takes a Selfie Every Mile, Inspires Millionshttp://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/06/05/man-hikes-from-mexico-to-canada-takes-a-selfie-every-mile-inspires-millions/
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/06/05/man-hikes-from-mexico-to-canada-takes-a-selfie-every-mile-inspires-millions/#commentsFri, 05 Jun 2015 13:00:37 +0000http://blog.flickr.net/?p=67652]]>In April 2013, Andy Davidhazy set out to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, a route running 2,660 miles from Mexico to Canada through the mountains of California, Oregon, and Washington. Five months later, he emerged from the trail transformed and, unbeknownst to him, poised to become a voice of inspiration around the globe.

After 20 years of professional success as a creative director and designer, Andy still had a bevy of unachieved personal goals, particularly connected to his passion for filmmaking and documentary photography, and he was searching for a personal renaissance. “I wanted to take on a big challenge to test some of the fears and limitations that maybe have held me back in life,” he tells The Weekly Flickr. “I was attracted to the Pacific Crest Trail because it was the hardest simple thing I could come up with.” After two decades in a career that rewards finding shortcuts around problems, he craved a clear, straightforward challenge he couldn’t sidestep. As he puts it, “You either hike every foot of the trail or you don’t.”

Before setting out, he decided he would snap a selfie at each mile marker of the hike. He was not only attracted to the novelty of the idea — he had never heard of it being done before — but he also hoped the practice would hold him accountable to staying on the trail. He explains, “If I were to take a shortcut or quit at any point, myself and everybody else would know about it, because I’d be missing a mile.”

Only a few weeks after deciding to hike the PCT, on April 22, 2013, Andy found himself standing at the Mexican border. As he began traversing the California desert, he discovered that while hiking 2,660 miles would be physically demanding, the psychological challenges would be his real nemesis.

“You’re confronting fears and anxieties that you have, whether it be a fear of heights, or fear of falling, or fear of bears and wildlife,” he recounts. He describes himself as something of a control freak going into the hike, and explains, “Doing this hike and living outdoors for five months was a direct assault on my need to control things, and the fears that are attached to doing that. You have no control of the scarcity of water or the weather.”

Although Andy was hiking in the summer months, inopportune weather turned out to be more problematic than just the occasional thunderstorm. With autumn looming, he arrived at Snoqualmie Pass in Washington in late September, a mere 250 miles from Canada, only to be greeted by disaster. An early and massive snowstorm struck suddenly and dumped between 6 and 7 feet of snow on the trail ahead. Anxiety and fear loomed large. “A lot of hikers went missing. I didn’t want to quit, but I also didn’t want to die,” he recounts.

Faced with an insurmountable impediment to his goal to “hike every foot of the trail,” he decided he would do the next best thing and hiked the last 250 miles along a road that circumvented the blizzard, depositing him in British Columbia on Oct. 12, 2013. The following summer, he returned to rehike those 250 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, which also gave him the opportunity to redo the last 250 selfies on the actual trail.

In 2015, Andy edited all the selfies into a time-lapse video. “The first thing people tend to notice is the weight loss,” he says, referring to the shocking physical transformation immediately evident in the short video. “But for me personally, the weight loss was a collateral benefit. I was out there to gain a new level of confidence that I could take and apply to other aspects of my life.”

In the end, he was not the only one who gained new confidence from his journey. Andy posted the video online, and within two months, it received more than 2 million views and resulted in his story being told by numerous media outlets, including CNN, PBS NewsHour, the Discovery Channel, the Weather Channel, BuzzFeed, and internationally in countries like Brazil, Slovakia, Hungary, Australia, New Zealand, and many others.

To his surprise, he began receiving letters from people around the world who had been deeply inspired by his story. “To see how what was inherently a fairly selfish journey of mine turn into a source of inspiration to many is not an experience I expected to have,” he says.

He is also eager to share the lessons he learned while traversing America. “Life happens very quickly on the trail. You feel pain, you feel discouragement, but you also experience great euphoria and beauty. All of that can happen in the course of hours, and that really helped me build faith in the fact that things would get better if I just kind of stuck with it. I would hope that people take away… a feeling of empowerment, that you can do anything you want in life if you just keep moving forward.”

Andy is currently pursuing his passions by producing a film about his journey. You can learn more at lostorfound.org.

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group, or tweet us at @TheWeeklyFlickr.

]]>http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/06/05/man-hikes-from-mexico-to-canada-takes-a-selfie-every-mile-inspires-millions/feed/0rfritztwfWeeklyFlickr LogoFather Recreates Famous Photos with His Daughterhttp://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/05/21/father-recreates-famous-photos-with-his-daughter/
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/05/21/father-recreates-famous-photos-with-his-daughter/#commentsThu, 21 May 2015 13:01:30 +0000http://blog.flickr.net/?p=67318]]>Brooklyn photographer Marc Bushelle and his wife, Janine, didn’t anticipate the overwhelming attention they would receive when they first had the idea to feature their 5-year-old daughter Lily portraying photos of iconic African-American women.

“It was pretty much just for us. We never imagined that we’d be sharing [this series] with the world,” Marc told The Weekly Flickr.

The Black Heroines Project began as a way to help Lily learn about African-American women whose strength and courage have made a difference in the world. “When people talk about black history, there is a list of names they rattle off. But we wanted to cover women that were not normally at the tip of people’s tongues,” Marc explains.

So they began creating portraits of Lily dressed as lesser-known but important trailblazers such as Bessie Coleman, the first black female airplane pilot; Mae Jemison, the first black woman astronaut and the first black woman to travel to space; and Admiral Michelle Howard, the first woman to become a four-star admiral in the U.S. Navy.

The process for selecting who to honor usually starts with a conversation between Marc and Janine, but always moves quickly to research that includes Lily. “We watch films. We listen to the music, if they are in that field,” Marc says. After Marc finds the photo to recreate, Janine often makes the costumes, and Lily contributes too. “For the Shirley Chisholm shoot,” Marc says, “Lily actually helped to paint the ‘Wow’ sign in the back.”

As can be expected of a little girl, Lily has a short attention span, but Marc and Janine always make sure she has fun. “She really enjoys dressing up. It’s hard to get her out of the costume after the shoot,” he says. But the experience is not only fun for Lily; it’s also educational. “I think she also really likes learning about these different heroines. It’s incredible to hear her mention one of them in passing, you know, just in a regular day.”

In addition to helping Lily cultivate a sense of self-worth and learn about her heritage, the Black Heroines Project has gone viral. Marc’s photos have been featured in dozens of media outlets around the world, and the project has garnered the support of celebrities such as ballerina Misty Copeland and entertainer Queen Latifah, who are featured in the series.

As the support has poured in, the Bushelles have been inspired to broaden the series to include notable women of all races. “Malala was a no-brainer,” Marc says, describing their portrait of Lily as the 17-year-old Pakistani activist and youngest-ever Nobel Prize-winner. Another recent addition to the series is the humanitarian Mother Teresa.

For Marc, it all comes back to family and building a legacy for Lily. “To be able to work with Lily to produce these photos, and have other people enjoy them,” he says, “is something that she can look back on… and cherish throughout her life.”

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group, or tweet us at @TheWeeklyFlickr.

]]>http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/05/21/father-recreates-famous-photos-with-his-daughter/feed/0rfritztwfWeeklyFlickr LogoMother of 10 celebrates every day with photographyhttp://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/05/08/mother-of-10-celebrates-every-day-with-photography/
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/05/08/mother-of-10-celebrates-every-day-with-photography/#commentsFri, 08 May 2015 13:01:11 +0000http://blog.flickr.net/?p=67078]]>It’s no surprise that the daily demands of raising 10 children would keep professional photographer Lisa Holloway incredibly busy, but the Kingman, Arizona, mom wouldn’t have it any other way. “Being a mother is the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done in my life, and I can’t imagine anything that would be better than this,” she tells The Weekly Flickr.

Like most parents, Lisa had always enjoyed taking pictures of her children, but she didn’t approach photographing them as a serious endeavor until she was pregnant with her fifth child. “I think it just started with wanting to have [photos of] higher quality than snapshots,” she says. “Something that they can hand down to their kids, and that will become family heirlooms, hopefully.”

With seven boys and three girls, ranging in ages from 1 to 17, life in the Holloway home can feel like a blur. Photography has become Lisa’s way of freezing time, and savoring memories of her kids’ evanescent childhoods. “When I look at my photos, I want to be able to look into the eyes of my kids, and see a little piece of their soul,” she says.

Photography also offers the family more than just heirlooms. It gives Lisa valuable one-on-one time with her kids, despite the fact that some of them are more amenable to being photographed than others. “I have a few that I have to kind of chase down and bribe,” she says. But when she manages to convince even the most shutter-shy of her brood to pose for the camera, the results can be breathtaking.

For Lisa, one such standout is a quickly arranged portrait of her little son Elliot holding one of the family chickens. “We gather our own eggs, and he loves the chickens,” she explains. “So we picked out one of his favorite hens, and went to an empty lot, right next to our house. We photographed him with his chicken. The second I saw it on the back of my camera, I knew I was going to love that picture.”

In addition to taking photos of her children, Lisa has run her own photography business since 2008, shooting portraits of all kinds. While the extra income helps the family budget, the business also provides an opportunity for the family to come together. The older kids help babysit their younger siblings while Lisa is on shoots. Her husband helps with locations and equipment setup. Fourteen-year-old Damien has a particular knack for eliciting smiles and laughs from small children, so she often brings him along as an assistant on shoots with younger subjects. “Photography has definitely made our family closer,” she says.

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group, or tweet us at @TheWeeklyFlickr.

The New York City fine art photographer is the man behind “Touching Strangers,” the wildly popular photo series that explores human connection through intimate portraits of people who have never met.

Richard became intrigued by the idea of photos capturing unrelated travelers in the same frame while working on a photography project in bus stations across the United States. Eager to explore the new concept, he took his 8×10 box camera to the streets of New York in 2007 and began approaching strangers of different backgrounds, asking them to pose together for a portrait.

From the beginning of his project, Richard has been upfront about the fact that his subjects are strangers. Still, that doesn’t curb a desire for people seeing the photos to want to define the relationships. Are they a couple? Friends? A family? “People have an almost primal response to create stories about how the people are connected,” Richard says.

While his earlier photos feature conventional forms of touch – his subjects holding hands, or placing their arms around one another — Richard found himself wanting more intimate moments of contact, in some cases asking his subjects to kiss or cozy up to one another. The results produced incredible moments of connection. “I was really rewarded over and over again by my subjects by their openness and their willingness to participate,” Richard says. “I think that was a wonderful gift.”

Audience reactions to the photos varied. While some were uncomfortable or creeped out, others wrote to Richard saying the photos moved them to tears. He gained such a following that a Kickstarter campaign to help him publish a book of his photos raised $80,943, surpassing the initial $10,000 goal.

For Richard, it is a project just as personal as it is public.

“There’s an exploration of my own desire to reach and touch other people,” he explains. “I think that just by our proximity to each other, we are connected. There is the potential for any stranger to become a lover, a partner, or a friend. We possess an extraordinary capability, drive, and desire to have intimacy in our lives.”

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]]>http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/05/01/photographers-intimate-portraits-of-strangers/feed/0ameyapendseWeeklyFlickr LogoThree mothers transform a photographer’s prejudiceshttp://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/04/24/three-mothers-transform-a-photographers-prejudices/
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/04/24/three-mothers-transform-a-photographers-prejudices/#commentsFri, 24 Apr 2015 16:53:44 +0000http://blog.flickr.net/?p=66594]]>Before embarking on her series Balancing Acts, photographer Lucy Gray had little respect for ballet as a career. “My perception of ballerinas, as a feminist, was that they were starving themselves for their job, that they were doing what they did for a man that was telling them what to do, that they didn’t want to grow up,” she says. “But,” she adds, “as a photographer, your job is to hunt down your prejudices and get rid of them.”

Lucy, a former writer for Elle magazine, had always admired working mothers — her own mother worked while raising her and her four siblings. She was looking for an opportunity to photograph a series about their struggles and triumphs when, in 2000, she was at the grocery store with her 3-year-old son and met a striking woman with a newborn. “We met this extraordinary-looking woman who was carrying her child,” she recalls. “She looked sort of ghostly because she was so pale and so thin. But she was extremely beautiful.”

When Lucy found out the woman was Katita Waldo, a prima ballerina at the prestigious San Francisco Ballet, she instantly knew she wanted to photograph her. Katita introduced her to two other ballerinas who had just become mothers, Tina LeBlanc and Kristin Long, and she began photographing their careers and personal lives for what ultimately became the Balancing Acts series. Little did she know that the project would end up spanning 15 years.

Lucy’s negative perception of ballerinas began to unravel as she encountered the high stakes of their decisions to have children. Since most ballerinas choose a career in dance by age 11 and begin dancing professionally shortly thereafter, they have little opportunity to develop other job skills. With the physical demands of both dance and childbirth, professional ballerinas who decide to have children are taking a major risk if their bodies are unable to quickly recover after birth — their livelihood is on the line. This risk, coupled with the demanding and stressful nature of professional dance, means it is both rare and quite brave for ballerinas to have children.

The three ballerinas in Balancing Acts were at the top of their field when they chose to get pregnant, and motherhood was not easy. One battled crippling stage fright, another’s marriage fell apart. Each faced not only the stresses common to motherhood, but also the constant pressure to prove themselves in the highly competitive world of dance. Past achievements were no guarantee of getting cast in upcoming shows, so long hours of practice and attempting to capture and hold the attention of the ballet’s artistic director were a constant feature of their lives. Yet, instead of faltering, they succeeded. “After they had children, they all got to be better dancers, which was the biggest surprise for me,” she says.

Lucy’s front row seat to the challenges, joys, and triumphs of the three mothers transformed her view of ballerinas and ballet. “I really admire them. I really believe in what they’ve done,” she says. “They taught me so much about ballet. I think it’s a great career now; I never would have imagined that!”

Lucy compiled their stories and her photographs in her first book, Balancing Acts: Three Prima Ballerinas Becoming Mothers, published in 2015 by Princeton Architectural Press. “I wanted to make an appropriate tribute to them,” she says. “It’s the gift I could give them, which they deserve.”

Having had her own preconceptions upended in the process of creating Balancing Acts, Lucy hopes readers of the book will take away that “being a working mother, having a job, can make you a better mother; and being a mother can make you better at your occupation.”

“But,” she adds, “I also hope people take away the pleasure, the joy in these women’s experience.”

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]]>http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/04/24/three-mothers-transform-a-photographers-prejudices/feed/0rfritztwfWeeklyFlickr LogoCelebrity portraits have a surprising twisthttp://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/04/03/celebrity-portraits-have-a-surprising-twist/
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/04/03/celebrity-portraits-have-a-surprising-twist/#commentsFri, 03 Apr 2015 13:00:16 +0000http://blog.flickr.net/?p=66058]]>Sam Spratt’s illustrations will make you look twice. The New York-based artist creates unbelievable digital portraits of celebrities, icons, and figures. “Many people ask, is this oil, is this pastel?” he explains, “I think digital painting is still fairly new in art, but eventually, it will just be another medium.”

Sam attended art school at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, where he studied oil painting, training in old-master techniques dating back to the Baroque and Renaissance periods. “It was very messy and stained everything I owned,” he says.

When he learned he could achieve a similar look with digital painting on tablets, he was hooked on the new technique. “It really struck a chord with me,” he says. “The process is very similar to traditional painting, but you can make changes easier and do it in this kind of synthetic and clean environment.”

As a TV and movie fan, Sam was initially interested in painting celebrities for the recognition factor. “There was this sort of shared appreciation,” he says. In art school, one of the first oil paintings he made featured the actor Sir Ian McKellen, and after his classmates responded well to the piece, he began painting more stars.

As he started to post his art online, he gained a following he never expected. “Now and then, they’d get thousands, maybe millions of interactions,” he says. The exposure was enough to catch the eye of music labels and major networks, who were able to commission him for work, including the opportunity to design the cover of Janelle Monáe’s second studio album.

“Creating Janelle Monáe’s ‘The Electric Lady’ album cover was a multi-month process,” he says, “simply because it was a very elaborate image. The degree of realism that they wanted was something higher than I honestly thought that I could do.” He was given thousands of photos for reference and various texts on Monáe’s background to read to help create the cover. It took hundreds of revisions before he arrived at the final version.

The album cover depicts Monáe’s alter ego, Cindi Mayweather, and her five sisters in different poses, wearing similar outfits. “All of the different versions of her on the cover are within her fictional universe that she paints through all of her music,” Sam explains.

As the album was launching, Sam received a surprise note from Monáe. “I got an email from her saying that ‘Prince wanted me to tell you that he loves your art,’” he says. “This was about midnight and I was almost asleep, and I just sort of sat up, like, “Ah! Prince!’ To have the person I respect most in the music industry say that about my work meant a lot.”

Sam is grateful to be able to make a living out of his passion for art. “I love the act of creating,” he says. “All the little details, the way light falls on a face, and getting to do that every day, I feel extremely fortunate.”

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group, or tweet us at @TheWeeklyFlickr.